I heard this story almost immediately after I got my ham license (1977). The story is there was a huge skip on 10 meters that enabled hams in the US (maybe other countries, too?) to listen in on Rommel's command cars when he was running rampant in North Africa. It seems the transmitters in the command cars were built to transmit in part of the 10 meter band. The US hams who happened to be listening to 10 (they couldn't transmit due to war regulations) started hearing German in part of the band. Those that understood the language I'm sure told the US military about what was going on, IF this event did happen.

Is there any way to prove/disprove this? I'm hoping there is documentation to prove it. Or it's an early urban legend.

I remember that story, too. The version I heard was that a farmer-ham heard the foreign-talk on his receiver, didn't know it was German, bud did know that hams were under radio silence during the war.

I suppose you could ask the editor of the QCWA Journal to query his readers about the veracity of the story. The Quarter Century Wireless Association's web site it www.qcwa.org, and its general manager is Jim LaPorta, N1CC, n1cc(at)qcwa-hq.com.

U.S. military and allies surely had plenty of listening posts in Free French outposts in Africa, on ships, in Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere nearby, especially England and its many African colonies. Many non-ham AM radios in the late 1930s had shortwave capability (although rarely extending to 10-meters). Sunspot numbers were low during WW2. It wasn't hard to find Rommel's army and tanks in the North African desert.

There were some great stories of stateside hams helping the war effort. My favorite is of the ham who lived overlooking the Brooklyn Navy Yard and heard some Morse interference coming from within his apartment building. Turned out the code was from a German spy down the hall who was sending ship positions back home. The spy was done in by his RFI! That story was in QST about a decade ago.

There were many listeners in the UK. Hams who were unfit for active service by virtue of age or health, marine radio ops who were retired and the like, all copying stuff and sending it to P.O.Box 25, Barnet, from where it went to a unit in Wormwood Scrubs prison for inital sorting and then the real interesting stuff went to Bletchley Park. This was the Radio Security Service, initially set up to catch spies. My father (G8ON) did that until he was called up for service in the RAF, and again after he was invalided out. They were issued HROs: father's last one had, unusually, a vernier scale fitted so you can log to 0.1 of a division. That didn't go back when the HRO did, and neither did the issued headphones - the scale graces my rebuilt HRO.

Had the great advantage that there was a pool of operators who could read Morse and didn't need training, used people who otherwise couldn't be used and freed other ops for the services. Must have been one of the few occasions when the government and military between them showed sense!

The sunspot max was about '46. The IGY was at sunspot max in '57 - that was a time when 10 meters was open all night on the North Atlantic. 10m DX was best in about 48 - it always in my experience tends to be better overall but more consistent on the down side rather than the upside.

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